Thursday, May 28, 2015

Outside the supermarket, a woman sitting at a card table
says she is collecting food for needy families with children.

I don’t recognize the name of her group and she’s
vague about where the food is going. But she’s friendly and seems sincere, so I
buy an extra can of baked beans. More generous shoppers than I stuff dollars in
her jar. I hope she’s on the level and go about my day.

How many times do we have such conflicting thoughts
and emotions? At every turn, we’re asked to give. We know people are hurting,
we want to help -- but we don’t want to be stupid. In my case, the financial risk
was minuscule, but too many kind-hearted souls contribute real money to bogus
charities.

There must be a special circle of Hell for charity
scammers who dupe unsuspecting donors. In this world, though, we rely on
government to punish the wicked.

In an unprecedented sign of nationwide resolve, all
50 states and the District of Columbia joined the Federal Trade Commission May
18 and accused four charities of fleecing more than $187 million from
unsuspecting donors from 2008 to 2012. The charities, all with cancer in their
names and run by family members, allegedly used almost none of the money they
raised for cancer patients for patients.

The charities claimed donors’ contributions would
“provide pain medication to children suffering from cancer, transport cancer
patients to chemotherapy appointments, or pay for hospice care for cancer
patients,” according to the complaint filed in federal court. “These were lies.”

None of the groups even
had programs to provide pain medicine to patients. None transported patients to
chemotherapy and none paid for hospice care.

Calling the groups “sham charities,” the complaint
says almost every penny collected actually paid for-profit fundraisers and enriched
the small group that ran the charities.

The funds donors intended for cancer patients
instead bought cars, dainties from Victoria’s Secret, meals at Hooters, and “training
trips” for employees and their families in Disney World and cruises of the
Caribbean. Donations went for personal loans and paid for college tuition, gym
memberships, Jet Ski outings, dating Website subscriptions and tickets to
concerts and sporting events.

Less than 3 cents of every dollar collected went to
cancer patients in cash and goods, the complaint states. “Comfort boxes” for patients included mostly overstock items, Carnation
Instant Breakfast, Little Debbie Snack Cakes and later Moon Pies.

Under terms of a proposed settlement agreement,
Children’s Cancer Fund of America and the Breast Cancer Society agreed to shut
down, and three principals will be banned from fundraising and other charitable
management activities. Litigation will continue against Cancer Fund of America,
Cancer Support Services and founder and president, James Reynolds Sr., the FTC
said.

It’s no easy task keeping track of charities. In
2012, there were about 1.6 million nonprofits registered with the Internal
Revenue Service. Individuals gave roughly $240.6 billion to charities in 2013,
according to Giving USA.

Almost every major disaster and tragedy generates a
new wave of scam artists. State and federal regulators simply can’t keep
up.

In case you’re thinking that sham charities are a modern
phenomenon, think again. Former President Grover Cleveland warned in 1906 that
people might be discouraged from giving to responsible charities because of
fraudulent schemes. He suggested the creation of an agency to test charities
and provide “reliable guidance” to donors.

Fortunately, today several organizations do just
that, including the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance, Charity
Navigator, Charity Watch and GuideStar. The FTC has good advice on its Charity
Scams page.

Consumers should know that many sham charities have
names strikingly similar to reputable ones. Beware of appeals that tug at
heartstrings with diseases like cancer and the suffering of children, police,
firefighters and veterans. Ask questions; legitimate groups should provide
information on how they spend donations.

And I learned this: “Wise donors don’t drop money
into canisters at the checkout counter or hand over cash to solicitors outside
the supermarket,” Charity Navigator advises in Top 10 Best Practices of Savvy
Donors.

We all have a role to play in stopping sham
charities. Now more than ever, it’s important to be generous -- and smart.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Perhaps no Memorial Day has been as quietly momentous
as May 30, 1899.

One hundred and 16 years ago, on what was then
called Decoration Day, Wilbur Wright, 32, of Dayton, Ohio, sat down and wrote a
letter by hand that literally changed the course of history.

He asked the Smithsonian Institution in Washington
for all the papers the Smithsonian had published on aviation and a list of
other works in English on the subject. He intended, he said, to devote whatever
time he could spare from his bicycle shop to the systematic study of human
flight.

Aware that his plan would seem far-fetched, since
most people believed man wasn’t meant to fly and it was folly to try, Wright
wrote:

“I am an enthusiast, but not a crank in the sense
that I have some pet theories as to the proper construction of a flying machine.”

Amazingly, the Smithsonian responded and sent
pamphlets and a list. Wilbur and his younger brother Orville began their
studies.

They worked tirelessly -- from studying birds in
flight to conquering the technical and mechanical challenges of building a flyer.
Four and a half years later, on a sandy beach in North Carolina the brothers
piloted the first sustained flights of a heavier-than-air machine.

Who the brothers were, how it all happened and what came
next make the compelling story biographer David McCullough tells in “The Wright
Brothers.” The book debuts at No. 1 in both the print and e-book nonfiction and
hardback nonfiction categories in the May 24 New York Times Book Review.

We may not agree on much in this cantankerous country,
but I’ll hazard a guess on one thing: Everybody loves a story of the American
dream. It’s hard to resist a tale of American ingenuity, hard work, courage and
perseverance, especially when it ends in unequivocal success.

The Wrights surmounted so many obstacles on their
path that their triumph seems made for TV.
Indeed, Tom Hanks scooped up the rights for an HBO miniseries even
before the book was released May 5.

That a man could take to the air like a bird was
such an absurd notion that many considered the Wrights odd. The brothers were
inseparable and never married. They shared the family house, cooking duties and
a bank account.

They had “no college education, no formal technical
training, no experience working with anyone other than themselves, no friends
in high places, no financial backers, no government subsidies, and little money
of their own,” McCullough writes.

Yet they never gave up.

They persisted despite the difficulty in shipping
their flying machines in parts to the remote Outer Banks coast and in combating
relentless swarms of mosquitoes, unpredictable weather and the occasional lack
of wind.

They persevered despite the
real possibility that they would die trying, as had other aviator pioneers. Orville nearly did die in a crash that took the
life of his passenger, the first death in aviation history.

What they did have was a dream coupled with energy,
courage and the spark of genius. They worked six days a week. Neither they nor their father, a traveling
preacher, had a high school diploma, but their father had a substantial library.
The boys and their sister Katharine read voraciously on all subjects.

They also pondered, thought through problems, and
when they failed experimented some more. And they wrote things out. By hand. And
here’s another thing that distinguishes the Wrights:

“Seldom ever did any one of the Wrights – father,
sons, daughter – put anything down on paper that was dull or pointless or
poorly expressed,” McCullough says.

When the brothers made their first successful flights
in Kitty Hawk, N.C., Dec. 17, 1903, no reporters were there. A “ludicrously
inaccurate” news story “concocted” by the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk ran in several newspapers around the country, McCullough
writes.

A sampling of the news
coverage on the Library of Congress’ site includes the story in the Richmond (Va.)
Dispatch, on page 5, headlined “A Machine That Flies.”

When the world finally took notice, the Wright
brothers became larger than life, first in France and Europe, then in the United
States. By all accounts, the celebrities never let wealth and fame go to their
heads.

They grasped as inspiration the idea that man could
soar with the birds and applied dogged determination until it happened.

This summer, the heroic Wright brothers are again
lifting Americans’ spirits.

Thursday, May 14, 2015

America’s last surviving World War I veteran died in
2011. Frank Buckles was 110 years old, and he devoted his last years to pushing
for a national World War I memorial on the National Mall in Washington.

There still isn’t one.

If all goes as hoped, though, the National World War
One memorial will open in 2018, the 100th anniversary of the
armistice that ended the “war to end all wars.” But it won’t be on the Mall.

After a design competition to be announced any day,
the World War One Centennial Commission hopes to transform Pershing Park, a
block from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, where today a statue of Gen.
John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, leader of the American Expeditionary Forces in
the war, commands a dismal plaza that has fallen into disrepair.

Buckles had dreamed of repurposing as a national
monument the District of Columbia’s elegant, open-air memorial to the city’s 499
World War I dead, but city officials balked. An effort
to create a memorial to doughboys in Constitution Gardens on the Mall, costing
up to $10 million, also collapsed.

And now there’s the problem of money. When Congress approved
the Pershing Park site last December, it decreed: “No federal funds may be
obligated or expended” for the World War I memorial.

It took only 60
years to build the World War II Memorial in Washington. The saga of the World
War I memorial shows how long and winding the road can be to commemorate our
war heroes, and that has implications for memorializing fighters in the War on
Global Terror.

We do have state, local and online memorials that honor
troops who have died in Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom and
related conflicts. Nearly 6,900 American men and women have died in combat since
2001.

But unlike previous wars, this one may not end when all
the troops eventually come home from Afghanistan as most have from Iraq, not if
the cancer of extremism continues to spread in the region.

That matters because under the Commemorative Works
Act of 1986, which governs new memorials in Washington, a new war memorial
cannot be built until at least 10 years after “the officially designated end”
of a war.

Then there’s the question of where to put such a
memorial. The National Mall is officially full. Congress in 2003 designated a
“Reserve” area where no new memorials can be built. The swath of prime real
estate from the U.S. Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and from the White House
to the Jefferson Memorial is a “substantially completed work of civic art,”
Congress said. Some memorials were grandfathered
in and Congress made exceptions for others, but new commemorative works are
prohibited.

With budgets tight and the congressional Republican
majority eager to hold down spending, the prospect of significant federal funds
for a memorial to the War on Terror appears slim.

Fortunately, the story of the Iraq and Afghanistan
veterans’ experience won’t be completely missing from the nation’s capital.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which built The Wall, plans an underground
Education Center at the Wall that not only will put faces with the 58,000 names
listed but also will include photos of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

“Every hour on the hour, we’re going to show photos
of Iraq and Afghanistan” veterans, Jan Scruggs, founder of the fund, told DOD
News last month.

“This will have enormous psychological importance to
the people who served in these wars. Eventually they’ll get their own monument,
I suspect… But this will be a place that will be a very big deal to them,” said
Scruggs, who hopes to start construction in 2018 and open the education center
in 2020.

But, again, there’s a question of money. Scruggs
said the center needs to raise $92 million more.

While space at the education center is not a permanent way to commemorate
the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s a decent start while we consider
what a fitting monument to our latest combat veterans should be.

Let’s hope we get together as a country and build a national tribute
before this generation of vets fades away.

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Republican Carly Fiorina has never held elective office,
although not for lack of trying.

In 2010 the former chief executive of
Hewlett-Packard sank $5.5 million of her own fortune into her Senate bid in California
against Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer. Despite a Republican wave
nationally, Fiorina lost.

So, when she announced her presidential bid on
Monday, Fiorina tried to make a virtue of her inexperience.

“Our Founders never intended us to have a
professional political class,” she said in a video. “They believed that
citizens and leaders needed to step forward.”

Welcome to yet another presidential campaign in
which amateur candidates hope voters will overlook their lack of political know-how,
and no candidate admits to being a politician.

Fiorina isn’t the only GOP presidential candidate
who’s starting at the top. Ben Carson, author and retired pediatric
neurosurgeon, has never held or even run for office.

“I’m not a politician,” Carson said Monday in
Detroit, launching his campaign. “I don’t want to be a politician because
politicians do what is politically expedient. I want to do what’s right.”

That may sound refreshing, but our political system
often requires cooperation and compromise.

As the former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee is
no stranger to politics. After winning the 2008 Iowa caucuses, he quit the race. He sat
out 2012.

When he entered the presidential contest Tuesday,
Huckabee chided politicians, without mentioning any names, for the common
practice of holding one office while seeking another, something several of his
Republican competitors are doing.

“If you live off the government payroll and you want
to run for (an) office other than the one you’ve been elected to, then at least
have the integrity and decency to resign the one that you don’t want anymore,”
Huckabee said.

Even seasoned politicians are distancing themselves
from their calling. Bill Clinton amazingly declared in an interview the other
day, “I’m not in politics.” Hillary Clinton has a resume as long as your arm,
but her performance in office may be a liability.

The 2016 presidential race is starting to sound a
lot like 2008, when another self-styled Washington outsider won favor.

Here’s Fiorina:
“If you’re tired of the sound bites, the vitriol, the pettiness, the
egos, the corruption, if you believe it’s time . . . for citizens to stand up
to the political class and say enough, then join us.”

And here’s freshman Sen. Barack Obama in 2008: “If
you believe that part of the problem is the failed politics of Washington and
the conventional thinking in Washington, if you’re tired of the backbiting and
the scorekeeping and the special-interest-driven politics of Washington, if you
want somebody who can bring the country together around a common purpose and
rally us around a common destiny, then I’m your guy.”

Fiorina, likely the only woman in the GOP field, is
positioning herself as the anti-Hillary, and Carson, likely the only black man,
as the anti-Obama. Critics say neither has a chance of actually capturing the
GOP presidential nomination.

That certainly will be
true if they fail to land onstage at the Republican debates starting in August. The Republican National Committee is working
on the criteria for determining who will be eligible to participate.

In presidential politics, though, hope springs. The
patron saint of long shots is Jimmy Carter. In 1974, Carter was such a confirmed
nobody that when he went on the TV game show “What’s My Line?” not one of the
panelists recognized him. He was governor of Georgia at the time. Two years
later, he was elected president.

But Carter’s presidency was lackluster and Obama’s
has suffered because he lacked the political skills to deal with the entrenched
powers in Washington. Voters should remember that it takes more than a fresh
face to get things done.

Hovering over the non-politicians is the specter of Herman
Cain. The flamboyant pizza company executive and tea party darling surged in
the polls of GOP presidential hopefuls in 2011, leading Mitt Romney by 20
points. Cain’s star plunged just as quickly, and he left the race amid charges
of sexual impropriety.